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According to Washington State University, phishing is defined as “creating a replica of a legitimate web page to hook users and trick them into submitting personal or financial information or passwords.” Phishing is a serious problem because our private information such as usernames, passwords, bank information, and credit card details are acquired from these seemingly legitimate websites. Once trapped, our money would be stolen.

For example in Portland America, a couple realized that they lost $31,000 thinking that the automatic withdrawals were made to the Bank of America after confirming the request in an email. Instead it was someone pretending to be an employee at the bank and money were in fact transferred to someone in a foreign country. Click here for more.

Phishing usually occurs in the form of emails, where email appeared to be sent from a legitimate source usually from financial institutions. Aside from email, of late, social networking sites have also become a favorite place for phishers to attack. One example would be MySpace.

According to CSIonsite, there are 8 different techniques of phishing used today.

An elaboration of what was mentioned,spear phishing“is an e-mail spoofing fraud attempt that targets a specific organization, seeking unauthorized access to confidential data. Spear phishing attempts are not typically initiated by random hackers but are more likely to be conducted by perpetrators out for financial gain, trade secrets or military information.”

So what can be done to protect yourself from falling victim to phishing?

Today, there are many thieves out there on the internet looking to leech off once we let our guards down. Taking precautions is necessary to not fall victim to phishing. What do you think about phishing? What other threats are out there on the Internet? What have you done to protect yourself from these threats?